


what have we found? (the same old fears)

by protect_the_fishboy



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Multi, Non-Canonical Character Death, Polyamory, au where shane doesn’t turn into That, au with minimal relationship drama bc polyamory exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 17:36:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18211457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protect_the_fishboy/pseuds/protect_the_fishboy
Summary: I know history.There are many names in historybut none of them are ours.(In which Shane has loved Rick since they were children, and as it turns out, that’s kind of a problem for him.)





	what have we found? (the same old fears)

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea when i’d barely started season 2 and had a very different perspective on shane. i’m almost to season 4 now, but still wanted to write an ode to what i think could’ve been if a few things had been different. title is from “wish you were here” by pink floyd; italicized dividers are from the poetry of richard siken (which fits strangely well).  
> (also i wrote this entirely last night during a midnight-8am shift and am posting it barely proofread and un-beta’d, so, you know. formatting is wonky because my laptop is broken and i had to do this entirely on mobile! idk why the spacing is so weird)

_I know history._

_There are many names in history_  
__but none of them are ours.  
_ _ __  


_*  
_

Maybe it starts that day in Rick’s backyard when they’re children, heat waves shimmering above the concrete like they’re excited to see them, grass staining their scraped knees green, sweaty bodies pressed together elbow to elbow. His father is teaching them to shoot, Rick and Shane, a line of empty beer bottles standing at attention on the fence. Shane feels Rick’s muscles working where their arms are pressed together, watches him trap his tongue between his teeth in concentration, fingers fluttering over the grip of the gun.  

 _When you pull that trigger, you have to mean it,_ Mr. Grimes told them before he handed Rick the gun—gingerly, reverently, like it was something alive. _That ain’t no toy. Never forget that,_ _Rick. You neither, Shane.  
_

Anyway. Rick’s taking his father’s words to heart, if the lines on his forehead are anything to go by, and he’s working that trigger finger, clench, release. Somehow, Shane is still surprised by the gunshot, muffled through the earplugs Mr. Grimes made them both wear, and he turns his head fast enough to see exploding glass raining down like strange snow, but he was looking at Rick’s face when he fired, is the thing, that moment of concentrationexhilarationpride, and, well.  

Rick turns to him with his face split into a grin, digs his hand into the meat of Shane’s shoulder, shakes a little.  

Shane thinks he’d do just about anything to get another one of those smiles. 

Shane thinks he is probably very screwed.  

*

Maybe it starts that day before everything goes to shit, when Rick, pale and still and not moving, his blood all over Shane’s hands, is the worst thing that has ever happened to them.  

 _Shh shh shh I’m right here_ , Shane says in a voice that doesn’t feel like it belongs to him, his hands shaking where they’re pressed to the wound _, you stay with me Rick, God damn it, you_ _stay with me, don’t you leave me, don’tleavemedon’tleavemedon’tleaveme_ — 

Maybe it doesn’t matter when it starts, because it all stops that day in the hospital room, when the dead are walking but Rick—Rick, the most alive person he knows, who can’t stay still to save his goddamn life, whose entire body shakes when he laughs—is laying there lifeless, when Shane presses his ear to his chest and hears nothing but quiet.  

Shane sees his whole life in that hospital bed. He thinks about summers of tree-climbing and tramping through the woods and half-melted coils of soft serve, basement movie marathons and sleeping out under the stars, shooting a line of bottles off a wooden fence, Rick’s smile, Rick’s laugh, Rick’s _hands_ , fuck, thinks about graduation, about the police academy, how it’s always been them, Rick and Shane, _RickandShane_ , RickandShane in the police car, in hails of gunfire, at Rick’s wedding. 

He thinks about how he’s always broken down at the dead brothers in _Saving Private Ryan._

His whole goddamn life, pinned to that bed like a butterfly. _  
_

* 

_A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river_

_but then he’s still left with the river.  
_ _A man takes his sadness and throws it away_

_but then he’s still left with his hands.  
_

_*_

 

Shane dreams.  

Sometimes they’re nice. Sometimes they’re things that happened—Rick’s wedding, Carl’s birth, that stupid senior prank with their principal’s car. Sometimes they’re things he wishes had happened, things he has never let himself say out loud—Rick’s lips on his, Rick’s hands on his hips, their stubble scraping together. Rick here, alive. That smile, just one more time. 

This time, Lori shakes him awake, and she runs her hands through his hair while the sweat cools on his skin. He lays there and trembles for a while.  

“You were saying his name in your sleep again,” she says quietly. Not probing, not accusatory, just quiet.  

“Yeah,” Shane says, and squeezes his eyes shut. “I, uh…I do that a lot, huh?” 

“Every couple of nights.” There’s a beat of silence. “They don’t sound like _bad_ dreams.”  

Shane, not even remotely ready to tackle that one, says, “Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if he was here?” 

“All the time.” She says it with a grim little smile. “He wouldn’t have trusted this group for a second. Not at first, at least.”

“Maybe not,” Shane says, very casual, as though his every waking moment isn’t ruled by an anxious, guilty feeling in his gut, _what do I do, Rick, what the fuck do I do,_ “but we can’t pretend they haven’t made our life a lot easier. And I think they would’ve grown on him.” 

“Our life,” Lori murmurs. “Singular. Like we’re one person.”  

Shane smiles sadly. He loves Lori—has loved her since high school, with her combat boots and her cigarettes, her rebellious streak a mile wide, how she could talk her way out of anything. Mostly, though, he loved how she looked at Rick, how whenever he was close enough she’d do these tiny, one-handed little braids in his hair, weaving and unweaving like her life depended on it.

Mostly, he loves her for loving Rick.  

And Rick—Shane has felt singularity with another person before. When they were back to back in alleys facing off against nervous criminals with guns, the way Rick could anticipate his every move without him saying anything, the fluidity of that, the comfort.  

He doesn’t feel that with Lori, but she is the closest thing he has, so he holds her closer.  

“You loved him. You were in love with him,” she says. It isn’t a question. 

There’s a roaring in Shane’s ears, a certain dizziness that comes with directly confronting this thing he’s been avoiding since high school, but why lie at the end of the world? What more can he lose?  

“I was,” Shane says finally, hating how broken he sounds. “I still am.”  

“I understand,” says Lori, and kisses the top of his head. “He was the love of our life.”

*

_Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath._  
_Don’t make a noise, don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you.  
_ _I will come back from the dead for you._  


_*  
_

And then the day comes when he’s sitting across from Rick and Lori and Carl around a bonfire, and every once in a while Lori is giving him these apologetic, sympathetic glances, and he wants to crawl out of his skin.  

 _You should tell him,_ Lori whispers fiercely when they have a moment alone. _We could make it_ _work somehow, we could—_

 _Tell him, and then what?_ He whispers back. He can still remember the taste of Lori’s mouth, of Lori’s— 

_It’s better this way,_ he says with finality, like his chest isn’t collapsing.  

It’s better.  

*

(A memory: Shane, standing over his father’s grave. Shot in the line of duty. Dead before he hit the deck. Et cetera.)  

(He’s been told over and over how brave his dad was, how selfless and heroic and honorable, but all Shane can think is that it’s not very selfless to abandon your kid with nothing but life insurance money and an absent mother.) 

_(“How could he do that to me?”_ Shane says, and hates how his voice cracks _. “Leave me without_ _a family? Who the fuck runs into gunfire with no backup? How could he fucking do that?”_ ) 

_(“You’re my family,”_ Rick murmurs. He’s standing with an arm around him, and Shane is almost more focused on the warmth of it than on his father’s headstone— _husband, father,_ _hero_ —because he is, apparently, deeply twisted as a person.) 

(They’re seventeen.  It’s the closest they’ve come to hugging since kindergarten. Rick smells like popcorn and laundry detergent, and Shane loves the fuck out of him.) 

(Their eyes meet, and Shane’s gaze drops to Rick’s mouth. Rick leans in, close enough that Shane can smell a hint of toothpaste, lips parting, and then Shane thinks of his father six feet underneath them, how he used to say _the day you settle down with a girl instead of loving and_ _leaving her, I’ll probably die of shock,_ and he jerks away, far enough that he can’t smell the toothpaste anymore, but not so far that the warmth of Rick’s arm leaves his back.) 

( _“Thanks, man,”_ he says like someone who isn’t in love with his best friend, like someone whose heart isn’t fit to burst. _“You’re my family, too.”_ ) 

* 

And then Carl gets shot, and Rick is hurting like he’s the one who took the bullet, shaking when Shane wipes the blood off his face.  

“I’ve got you,” he whispers over and over. _I’ve got you I’ve got you I’ve got you._

_  
_

“You’ve got me,” Rick parrots back, voice thick with tears.  

“I’ve got you,” Shane says. “You’re my boy.” 

Rick is not a boy, Rick is a man, a man who has killed and fought and come back from the goddamn grave, but, well.  

And Shane is looking at Rick, and Rick is looking at Shane looking at him, and Shane wants so badly to kiss him that he clenches his fist hard enough for blood to well in little crescents on his palm.  

“Tell me he’s gonna get through this,” Rick says. They’re still whispering, and it makes the room around them feel emptier, makes Shane more grateful for the warmth of Rick’s body close to his.  

If Shane kissed him now, it’d taste like Carl’s blood, like the dusty air of the farm. 

“He’s going to get through this,” Shane says, forcing his voice to come out strong, steady. “We’ve got a doctor working on him. A real doctor.”  

“A doctor with no supplies,” Rick says miserably. “I need to go—” 

“I’ll do it,” Shane says. There’s no way Rick can go on a supply run right now and they both know it.  

“Shane—” 

“Let me do this for you. Please.” 

Rick looks at him for a long moment, leans forward so their foreheads are touching.  

“Be safe,” he says in a whisper. “I can’t lose you. I can’t.”  

“You won’t,” Shane says, and it doesn’t really matter that this is sort of a lie.

Their mouths are inches apart.  

Shane doesn’t kiss him, but he tastes blood in his mouth for the longest time. 

*

_Imagine that the world is made out of love._  
_Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong,_  
_where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain  
_ _and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.  
_ _Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need,  
_ _where everyone is at cross-purposes and  
_ _everyone is to blame._

_*_

_(Tell me what really happened that night, Shane._ Rick’s voice is soft. Careful. Carl is back on his feet, and they’ve had their little funeral. Shane even told his pretty lie without his voice shaking.) 

(Shane looks at Carl, playing underneath the apple trees, and tells himself to breathe.)  

( _I—_ Shane starts, and then it’s all happening again, Otis screaming, Otis begging, Otis fighting for his life— _I’m sorry,_ a gunshot, another, and the sound of screaming.) 

(Shane pitches forward, vomits on Rick’s shoes. _I had to make it back. I had to make it back to_ _you. I had to—)  
_

( _Shane—oh fuck, Shane, hey, hey, it’s okay._ When he looks up, Rick’s face is gentle but his eyes are hard.)  

( _You’re right. You made it back to me. That’s what matters.)  
_

( _He suffered,_ Shane says. _They—they ate him alive.)  
_

( _We’re all suffering,_ Rick says after a long moment. _You just—I just need you to always come_ _back to me, okay?)_

(Shane wishes he’d kissed him before—that time when they were 17, or any of the moments before that, or even later, in their police car, during those nights at that bar—anytime before now, before he had all this blood on his hands.)  

( _Okay,_ he says, and Rick clasps his shoulder, holds on tight. And Shane thinks, how short the life of the bullet compared to the wound.)  

* 

“You still haven’t told him,” Lori says. She’s rolling out dough for an apple pie, and the novelty of that kind of knocks Shane the fuck out. He’s watched her kill a walker with a hacksaw to the face, and here she is, making a pie.  

“Um,” he says. “Why would you want me to?” His eyes flash down to her belly. She’s not showing, not yet, but everyone has heard by now. “Especially now.”  

“Because he deserves to know. And you deserve to have him know. And…” She pauses, wiping her flour-coated hands on her apron.  

“If this had all happened pre-apocalypse, I think I would’ve hated you,” she says. “But now, after Rick got shot…after we…” She makes a vague, all-encompassing gesture, which Shane takes to mean _fucked dozens of times in a goddamn tent,_ “It’s all just…it’s more fluid than I thought it was.” She shrugs. “Rick loves me. I love him. I…I love you. And you love him, and I think he loves you. So…why can’t we all just be happy?” 

Shane thinks about everything he knows about Rick, ponders the possibility of him being okay with this. He doesn’t even know what _this_ is.  

“He doesn’t know we had sex,” he says. And then Lori goes very pale.  

“You _what?_ ” says an angry voice. Rick’s voice.

So they’re doing this, then.

*

You thought I was dead,” Rick says, his voice not so much calm as exhausted. “So you slept with my wife?” 

“I…yeah.” Shane’s jaw aches. Rick pulled his punch, but it still hit its mark. Just enough to hurt without harming.  

“That part, I could understand,” Rick says after a moment, tight, controlled. “End of the world, whatever. But…you, what, hang out in kitchens now? Do I need to worry about that? Do I need to--” 

“We hang out in kitchens,” Shane interrupts, squeezing his eyes shut, not completely sure he’s not going to pass out right the fuck here, his pulse thundering in his ears, “because I talk to her about…about…” 

“About _what?_ ” Rick demands. 

“About how I’m in love with you.”  

Rick blinks. Blinks again.  

“Oh thank _God_ ,” he says finally, and nothing Shane has ever imagined Rick’s mouth feeling like could measure up to the real thing.  

* 

_Sorry about the blood in your mouth.  
_ _I wish it was mine.  
_

* 

They settle into an odd arrangement. Things are like they’ve always been, except sometimes (oftentimes) they have sex, they kiss, and Rick splits his time between Shane’s tent and Lori’s, and Shane complains to Lori about Rick’s morning breath and his pride, and Lori laughs long and loud and says _try sleeping in a tent with him after chili night,_ and maybe it’s because it’s the end of the world but no one looks at them twice.  

Shane thinks he must be very strange as a person, to be happier now sleeping on the ground and killing walkers than he was in the world before, with cell phones and air conditioning and Sunday football.

* 

It doesn’t last. How could it? 

It’s just a few disagreements at first, a few differences in leadership, but it escalates. Shane doesn’t want to admit it, but part of it is this brewing, baseline anger, that Rick gets his wife and his kid and his baby but also his boyfriend, that all Shane has are a few nights a week in his tent.  

And then Shane lets the walkers out of the barn, mows them down. They fight. They trade blows until Lori is screaming, begging them to stop, until Shane is spitting out blood and his vision is blurry.

 You can’t keep pushing me like this,” Rick says, and Shane can’t tell if that’s anger in his voice or pain. “Please, Shane. Please don’t do this.”  

Shane wants to say _, I can’t stop. I’m keeping us alive._ But he’s tired, and he’s hurting, and what comes out is a bitter _“_ Fuck you,” and he doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he wipes the blood off his mouth with the back of his hand, sees the tremors. He balls it into a fist.  

Lori is crying, he thinks, and he almost feels bad about it.  

And then something strange happens. Rick drops to his knees in front of Shane, in front of Carol and her mourning, in front of the shell-shocked Greene family, in front of Lori and Carl, who is sobbing into her lap, in front of the pile of walker bodies, and kisses him hard, pulling him in close.

“You bastard. You dumb fucking bastard. I thought they were going to kill you.”  

Shane closes his eyes and whispers an apology and loves this man so much that it hurts. 

* 

_Do you think they remember who they are?_ Rick says while they’re burning the bodies, the cloying scent of rot hardly phasing them anymore. _Even a little bit?_

Shane thinks about the walkers he’s seen, those empty eyes, their primal need.

 _No_ , he says, and his chest aches, because more and more often these days he sees the walkers and feels like he’s staring at his future. _Not even a little bit.  
_

* 

The farm falls. Shane gets hurt, so much blood soaking into his shirt that he can barely tell it used to be white.  

“You stay with me, god damn it,” Rick says, pressing into the wound. It hurts, which Shane sluggishly remembers is a good thing—he may die, but he’s not dying right now. It’s a healing pain, not a dying pain. When it doesn’t hurt at all, that’s when you worry. “Don’t you fucking dare leave me. You stay with me.” 

It’s hard to keep his eyes open. He’s so tired, and Rick is here, which means he is safe.  

“’S….about time,” he wheezes, huffs out a breathy laugh. “That you…were the one…telling _me_ not to die on _you_.”  

“I don’t like it,” Rick says with a wet laugh that is more of a sob. “Don’t know how you dealt with it.” 

“I…didn’t, really.” Shane coughs, and his vision goes black around the edges. Maybe he’s dying after all. “Don’t…don’t let me…turn into…a walker. You…you put me down, Rick.”  

Tears are flowing down Rick’s face now, mixing with the blood on Shane’s shirt. “Stop it. Shut up. _Hershel!”  
_

“Promise me,” Shane says, his eyes drooping closed.  

“No. Shane. _Shane!_ You can’t do this. You can’t make me become this and then check out. _Shane.”  
_

He feels cold, but Rick’s hands are warm, and the last thing he sees is Rick’s face. All things considered, there are worse way to go.  

As he drifts off to sleep, he wonders if he’ll dream. 

* 

_There’s a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet  
_ _staring up at us like we’re something interesting.  
_ _This is where the evening splits in half, love or death.  
_ _Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish._

_*_

Shane doesn’t die, of course. He doubts his death will be that peaceful when it comes. Lori’s at his bedside (or rather, next to where he’s lying on a patch of grass somewhere) when he comes to, her face red and puffy from crying. 

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel when her face lights up, when she yells for Rick, but he feels heavy with disappointment, with dread.  

He thinks that in this new world you only get one chance at a good death. It didn’t happen on the farm, cradled in Rick’s arms, so he’ll probably go bloody, go screaming, eaten alive like Otis. 

Maybe that’s what he deserves. 

* 

They take the prison. They lose people, but they make it, and for a moment they feel safe. 

And then the baby is born, but Lori is dead, and something inside Rick breaks.  

He won’t touch the baby, won’t touch Shane, won’t look at Carl. The only time they communicate is when they’re being attacked, and Shane finds himself wishing he was on the other end of Rick’s gun more than he would like.  

Shane aches, wishes he could talk to Lori. She was the glue that held them together, the electric rail that kept them moving. More and more these days, he just wants to stop. 

The one time Shane tries to talk to him, puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, Rick slams a fist on the table and pins him with a dangerous glare.  

“It should’ve been you,” he spits, wild-eyed, and leaves Shane there frozen where he stands.  

And then one day there’s a close call—Shane is surrounded, is quite literally nose to nose with a walker, is only saved by a well-timed arrow from Daryl, and he falls to the ground underneath the thing.  

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hears Rick yell, and then running feet, two gunshots, “Nononono,” and then he realizes how this looks, what Rick thinks must have happened, and he shoves the body off of him, sits up. “I’m fine,” he says, still getting his breath back, “It fell on me but Rick, I’m fine,” and then he has a face full of curly hair, arms full of a shaking man who hasn’t touched him in weeks.  

“I thought I’d lost you too,” Rick says, and his voice shakes. It’s the first time he’s been anything but angry in weeks. “I thought…” he trails off. “I miss her so much, Shane. I miss her so goddamn much I can’t—” 

“I know,” Shane says gently, and lets his eyes close. “I…I miss her too.” He remembers Lori’s words from the tent that night, swallows hard. “She was the love of our life.” 

And Rick finally cries. 

* 

There was a moment on the farm—when Shane killed Randall, when he took Rick on a wild goose chase to find a boy that was already dead—when Shane pulled his gun and Rick pulled his knife, and they stared at each other like a couple of animals caught in a trap. 

_What is this?_ Rick had whispered. _What are you turning me into?_  

 _I don’t know_ , Shane said. _I don’t know.  
_

*

 

So they start to adjust, if you can call it that. So they work out in the sun, they kill walkers, they train, they disagree, they beat the shit out of each other, they have rough makeup sex, they kiss, they make each other bleed.  

It didn’t used to hurt this much, Shane thinks, but then again, nothing did. 

It’s him and Rick here at the end of the world. 

* 

The irony of it is—or maybe it’s not irony, Shane flunked English, whatever, but the fucking goddamn _ridiculous_ _thing about it_ is, they really start to make a home. 

The prison is drab, is grey and damp and cold, but it’s safe, safe for the first time since the farm. Their crops start to grow. It’s sunny, most days. Shane and Rick figure out how to share a prison bunk.  

It’s the stupidest thing, at the end.  

The two of them are on a supply run, get 

themselves caught up in a herd. They’re low on ammo, doing this hand-to-hand, but they’ve gotten caught after dark like a couple of amateurs, like people who haven’t been living this way for a year. They find a shack in the woods with wooden slats over the doors, no roof, and the hands of the dead are growing increasingly frantic. The door won’t hold for long, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to climb over the walls, through the gaping hole where the roof should be. They’re surrounded, and there’s no way they can fight their way out of this.  

“Kill me,” Shane says, desperately. “Kill me and throw them my body. Then you can make a break for it out the back door. Get back to the others.”  

“No,” Rick says, shaking his head. “No, absolutely not.”  

“It’s the only way, Rick. One of us has to make it out of here, and you have Carl to think about, Judith--”

 

“Could you do it?” Rick says. “Could you kill me?”  

Shane doesn’t know what to say to that.  

“They can’t lose both of us. Who’s going to lead them? What is Carl supposed to do?” 

A rotting hand breaks through one of the boards, and the growling outside grows louder, more frantic.  

“I’m not killing you, Shane,” Rick says.  “Our people are safe. The prison…it’ll hold for a few months, probably longer. Our people will be okay.” 

“Don’t be _stupid,”_ Shane begs. “You can get out of here, just—you have one bullet left, right? Just shoot me, it can be in the leg, like Otis—” 

“No,” Rick says, pressing his temple to Shane’s. Very slowly, he lifts the gun to his head. 

“Together,” he says, “or not at all. And I say better us than a horde of walkers.” 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut. This goes against every instinct he has, but more hands are starting to break through, and there’s a hole wide enough for a walker to be sticking his head through, jaw snapping open and shut.

_I’m sorry, Lori,_ he thinks, and says “Okay. Together.” 

“I love you,” Rick says.  

“I love you,” Shane says, and kisses him hard. Rick’s body is warm against his. Maybe it was always going to happen like this.  

He tilts his head up, feels Rick click off the safety.  

Above them, the sky is clear and full of stars.  

* 

_We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back  
_ _to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,  
_ _not from the absence of violence, but despite  
_ _the abundance of it._

**Author's Note:**

> i’m sry  
> also i feel like my writing is rusty and i’m still not happy with the ending bc it’s way too abrupt. i may come back when i have computer access and fix it, build up to it a bit more, but for now i did this on my PHONE so OH WELL  
> tumblr: sighfrancisco come scream w/ me


End file.
